


A Crueler Kindness

by ReyloTrashCompactor (NextToSomething)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Eventual Smut, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Eventual Comfort, Interrogation, Prompt Fill, Sexual Tension, This story is complete even though AO3 won't list it as such., Tumblr Prompt, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-13 21:46:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5718241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NextToSomething/pseuds/ReyloTrashCompactor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey is not suited for interrogation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Crueler Kindness

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a prompt fill for an anon on Tumblr: "Hi! Are you still taking prompts? I’d like to read a fic where Rey deals with Kylo’s touch starvation (please, make me cry hard.)" 
> 
> I was going to leave it here, but after some thought, I will be writing a second part hopefully tomorrow/Friday. Maybe resolve some of that UST. Please let me know what you think! I hope you enjoy.

“I won’t do it again.” **  
**

General Organa nodded her head solemnly as Rey stalked from the interrogation room. Rey sagged against the far wall of the hallway, letting out a long sigh that carried her body all the way down to flop heavily on the floor.

“I understand. I don’t… I want there to be a better way, too,” the General sighed, looking like she would also like to slide to a heap on the floor.  

Rey’s head fell back against the duracrete wall with a dull thud, and she waggled her bottom jaw, trying to loosen the tension there. It had only been 20 minutes, according to the clock on the opposite wall, but her time in that room with _him_ always felt like hours, days.

“Did you get… Anything?” General Organa’s usually firm voice quavered a little, as if uncertain she wanted to hear the answer.

Rey shook her head. “Nothing.”

Organa nodded again. “I understand if you find the whole thing distasteful. After what he did to you.”

Distasteful. That was a word for it, perhaps. To Rey, it felt _wrong_. Trying to worm her way into a place that wasn’t meant for her. No matter what he had done to her–she couldn’t do it back. It turned her stomach to try to penetrate the last boundary a desperate human body had left: their own mind. And though they wanted, no, _needed_ , Supreme Leader Snoke’s location, attempting to pluck it from Kylo Ren’s aberrant brain was a task Rey truly wished hadn’t been given her by the Resistance after his capture.

“We could… There are other ways,” General Organa muttered.

Rey looked up with startled eyes to the General. Her mouth was pressed into a thin line, and Rey knew what she was thinking.

“No!” Rey dismissed the idea with a grimace. “We’re better than that. And you shouldn’t have to do something like that to your own son.”

 _Though I don’t know if he would pay you the same courtesy,_ Rey added silently. “I’ll try again. Just… talking to him. He might not know how to react to simple conversation.” She knew that she was reaching, but she would say anything to keep that final option of torturing the location from the wretch that used to be Ben Solo from being their only option.

“You are good, Rey,” General Organa said after a moment. “You are good to me.”

Rey stood. “Don’t say that just yet.”

* * *

“Back so soon, scavenger?” His voice was smooth and steady, completely belying the haggardness of his appearance. His black costume was missing more than a few layers and a large rend exposed the startling white of his left shoulder. They did not have him strapped in such an elaborate interrogation chair as what had been used on her on Starkiller. He rather sat on a low metal bench, his wrists bound before him in a complicated Force manacle that attached to the floor by a dimly gleaming length of chain. He braced his forearms on the tops of his thighs in a facsimile of casual disinterest, his gloveless fingers fiddling with the links of the chain that connected the metal cuffs.

But Rey could feel how much he hated to be incapacitated. His eyes focused on the idle twisting of his fingers on the links of metal, a posture that looked more defeated than he probably realized.

She shrugged and lowered herself to the floor again, crossing her legs beneath her. She looked up into his face and remembered how surprised she had been when he had shown her a strange kindness in a similar situation.

The softness of the face beneath the mask had been enough to startle her into momentary weakness, into curiosity rather than fear. Perhaps she could evoke the same from him, now.

“I thought we might just talk.”

He looked down at her then, sitting at his feet. She wasn’t close enough to reach, but just so. He chuckled and it was a sound as foreign to this room as snow was on Jakku.

“My clever little scavenger. You think you know of more than one way to pick apart wreckage. But tell me: how often does chatting up the engine compartment result in the surrender of its valuables?”

She smiled sweetly up at him, hoping her aim was true. “More often than you think.”

He shifted in his chains, only a minor adjustment, but Rey tallied it a success.

“How are you?”

Ren scoffed. “That’s your opening line? You’re horrible at this.” He shifted again, leaning toward her. His chains rattled along the hard floor. “But we knew that already, didn’t we?”

Rey resisted the urge to lean back. He might be able to reach her now, were he quick about it. But, she reasoned, he was always able to reach her, with his powerful hands or not. The manacles only managed to dampen his wielding of the Force, and even then, he was formidable. Though, for whatever reason, he’d not attempted anything on her in these last few days of careful interrogation.

“How are _you_?” He canted his head, parroting her words back at her. There was a cruel tightness to his eyes and a smirk on his lips that had nothing to do with humor.

Rey sighed, deciding on honesty. “I’m tired. I don’t like this–I don’t like trying to see into your mind.”

“Do my thoughts scare you so much, little scavenger?” The smirk widened.

“Don’t flatter yourself.” She found it difficult to continue to look into his eyes, to absorb this foul energy his insouciant remarks produced. “I just find the act itself…” She paused, remembering her conversation with the General.

“…distasteful.”

He laughed that humorless laugh again, shaking his head at the very idea of her. “You are weak.”

Something in his words tripped something inside her. The filtered air of the room suddenly seemed that much denser. She leaned forward then, onto her knees, placing hands on the floor and bringing her face very close to his. “You and I both know that is not true.”

She eyed the still healing scar that slashed across his face, willing him to remember how it got there. But when she looked back to his eyes, they were wide with apparent fear. He was staring hard at her mouth, his own agape, and she realized just how close they were. She shifted, just an inch, and that terror in his eyes flashed anew. He flinched away from her.

The movement spurred her.

She lifted a hand from the floor, slowly so as to not lose her balance should he decide to lunge at her. He was shying away, though she didn’t think he was aware of his retreat. She pressed the tips of her fingers into his full bottom lip.

He uttered a noise that she didn’t know a man could make, something wet and mewling, and he pressed his mouth into her fingers. She was motionless as she watched him, frozen in basest fascination at his reaction.

Her first finger slipped between his lips and he caught it between his teeth. Sucked it deeper into his mouth.

His bound hands reached for her, rattling the chains. The racket of his lunge shattered the trance she had fallen into, and she tumbled back from him, her hand falling from his mouth. She crawled away from him, suddenly frightened.

He dropped inelegantly from the bench in an attempt to chase after her. He was yanked back abruptly by the chain securing him as he tried to crawl after her, falling hard on his exposed shoulder but continuing to struggle against his tether.

She stayed out of his reach, panting in fear and something else she didn’t know the name of. She could still feel the wet from his mouth on her fingers and gathered them into a fist. Whether to banish the feeling of him, or hold it more closely, she didn’t know.

He looked wild. Confused and rabid as he crouched on the hard floor. His hair had fallen into his eyes and it fluttered with each of his shuddering breaths. His eyes were hard on her, angry and desperate. What had she discovered? What had just happened?

She slid back onto her hands and knees, moved just a few inches toward him. He pulled hard on his chains, a testament to either their strength or his weakness when they would not free him. His breathing turned to low growls as she crawled to him. She held out one hand, palm down, knuckles leading, as if attempting to temper a wild dog.

His eyes darted between her extended hand and her eyes as he snarled, “Scavenger scum.”

She reached him, carefully smoothing the back of her hand across his cheek. That noise again, a broken, lewd keening as he pressed into her hand. She swiped it back down his face and he turned his lips into it. His breath was hot on her wrist as she flexed her hand and rubbed her palm over his opposite cheek. Again his mouth sought it, laying nipping bites to the swell of flesh as the base of her thumb, wet kisses at the divides of her fingers.

He was ravenous, still struggling against the chains to touch her, _touch her_. He looked so livid, so terribly indignant as he crudely ground his face into her outstretched hand, his eyes alternating between glaring at her and squeezing shut in some agony she didn’t fully understand.

“Tell me where Snoke is.” Her voice was a breathy whisper. As soon as the words escaped her, she felt a turn of revulsion. If slithering into his mind to find answers had been distasteful, this felt repulsive. He was desperate for this contact, half out of his mind with needing to be touched, and she was using it against him. His tongue laved a hot path up her wrist and she felt something else, as well. Something as base as his animalistic agitations.

She laced her other hand in his hair.

The roots of it were slick with sweat and he moaned when she tugged at it. She tugged harder.

“Tell me where Snoke is hiding.”

He lunged again, his teeth clacking with a bite that did not quite connect with her own throat. She moved then, bringing her neck closer so he could bury his face there. His hands still could not quite reach her, but he dove his face into the exposed skin below her ear with another guttural groan. He was obscene in his attempts to consume her flesh. All teeth and hard sucking kisses that would mottle her with dark bruises. It felt incredible.

“N-no,” he stuttered against her.

She arched into him, knowing her own cruelty, but enjoying the sensations his mouth ignited along her flesh. His mouth reached the thin skin over her collarbone now, his fingertips just barely able to brush against her stomach. At this briefest of victories, she ripped her body away from him.

He nearly howled.

“Tell me where Supreme Leader Snoke is stationed!” she shouted, her words broken with her panting breaths.

“Wretched minx.” He yanked again on his chains. “Come close enough so that I can handle you properly.”

“Not until you tell me about Snoke.”

He barked a laugh, tugged again on his restraints. “Then I can fuck you?” he sneered. “Once I tell you where to find my master?”

His words cut through her, kindled something dark and heavy low in her gut. She didn’t know this kind of prurience, this deeply foreboding, erotic want. He talked about her body as if it already belonged to him, and she shivered at her almost enjoyment of the idea.

She delved too far into something she didn’t understand. He leaned into her touch, seemed starved for it, and she thought she could use it for her own gains. But he turned it on her. He ridiculed her with her avarice.

“No,” she intoned, low and steady. She remembered his initial fear at her touching him. She seized onto that power. “No, Kylo Ren.” She stood, looked down at his huddled form on the floor. “You’ll never fuck me.”

The words didn’t form correctly in her mouth, but she thought the effect was all the more palpable for it. She was clumsily mocking his crudeness, and yet she held all the power.

“But if you don’t tell me where your master is, I’ll make certain that you will never be touched by another living soul for as long as you live.”

The gleam in his eyes snuffed out in a flicker, and Rey immediately regretted her cruelty. 

This man, this boy, who killed his father and would kill her given half the chance–he broke her heart. She ached at the pain in his eyes when she touched him, at the urgency of him. How long since he had been touched by anyone, skin to skin?

Not since Han Solo, she realized with another slow roll of her stomach.

She backed slowly from him toward the door, appalled at herself, at what she was doing. The heavy air of the room made sense now–the ponderous weight of the Dark Side, calling her to extinguish what little spark was left in Kylo Ren. What was left of Ben Solo.

Just as she opened her mouth to recant, Ren spoke.

“I’ll tell you.” His voice was splintered, and he spoke to the floor, not to her. “I’ll tell you where he is.”

“Ren.” Rey moved back to him, her hand outstretched again.

He jerked his face away from her would-be caress. Glared up at her. “Don’t.”

She withdrew, her hand shaking.

“You _are_ weak,” he spat. “You have me, right under your thumb.” Tears shown on his lashes as he eviscerated her word by word.“You could watch me squirm, could have me fouling my hands, the floor, with my wanting of you! Yet you tremble! You shrink from the power you could have over me!”

Tears sprang to her eyes as she watched the wretch on the floor huddle as far from her as his tether would allow.

“Tell General Organa that I will cooperate.”

She felt no relief at this. This was worse, so much worse than violating the sanctuary of his own mind. She had traded one violation for another, and it truly sickened her.

When she staggered from the room some minutes later, she couldn’t help but collapse to the floor outside the door of his holding cell.

General Organa was on her in less than two steps, motioning for reinforcements from the guards down the hall. Rey waved them off.

“I’ve got it,” Rey breathed. “He told me.”

The General nodded at the guards and they retreated back to their stations.

“Caraya’s soul, Rey! What happened to your neck?” Organa pressed her fingers into the tender flesh as Rey attempted to shrug out from beneath her touch. “Did he hurt you?”

“No. No.” She shook her head, willing the mad glint of his eyes from her thoughts, the cowed posture he crumpled into as she hurried from the room with his intelligence on Snoke.

“I think–” Rey swallowed, squeezed her eyes shut against the unnecessary concern of General Organa.

“I hurt _him._ ”


	2. A Kinder Cruelty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I won't delay this any longer with a whole lot here--just a quick note to say thanks for the keen interest in this little thing! Please leave me a note and tell me what you think!

Rey stared at the keypad for a long moment, willing herself to enter the combination that would open the door. She lifted a hand, only to have it flop back down by her side. **  
**

She should leave. She had a very early morning to look forward to as one of the pilots chosen for the mission to end this conflict between Snoke and the Resistance once and for all. C-3PO had confirmed the intelligence she had extracted from Kylo Ren, and they were set for Jakku in the morning. It would always come back to Jakku, it seemed–-much to Finn’s disgruntlement.  

Down the hall, a guard cleared his throat. Rey turned to him, taking a few steps away from the keypad. He looked hard at her, though she didn’t think she recognized him. The guard glanced at the door she was vacillating between actually entering or not, then back to her. Then, very pointedly, turned his back and left the hallway.

Rey took this as signal enough and hurriedly entered the release code.

Kylo Ren sat in much the same position as he had the last time she had entered the room–-on the metal bench with his forearms braced on the tops of his thighs. He had been changed out of his tattered First Order uniform since she’d seen him and while the change of clothes were not the same relentless layerings of black, whomever had seen it appropriate to give them to him had taken some small mercy on him. He was outfitted now in dark greys and charcoals, tidy, though the fabrics were less fine than that of his other clothes.  

He was still chained.

He wouldn’t acknowledge her, which she thought was something she probably deserved. She simply walked in and leaned against the wall opposite him. After a moment more of silence, she slid slowly down the wall to sit again on the floor, her arms resting on the tops of her knees. And waited.

“What are you doing here?” he asked after a long moment. His eyes were trained on his clasped hands before him.

Rey sighed, not daring to look at him. “I am weak.”

She felt his eyes on her then, felt him willing her to look up. When she did, she suddenly had the mad thought that she wished he was masked again. His face was too raw, the tempest of emotions playing across his eyes was nearly painful to witness. He was pinning her like a beetle to the board with his gaze alone, and it terrified her.

She lifted a shaking hand, and with a unique twisting of her fingers, the manacles dropped from his wrists with a loud _clank_.

The room was eerily quiet once his bonds fell away. She realized belatedly that she wasn’t breathing, waiting for what he might do next. She took the tiniest sip of air, and he moved.

He stood, kicking the chains that pooled at his feet out of the way. The noise was jarringly loud in the quiet room and Rey couldn’t stop the flinch that shook her body. He took slow, decisive steps toward her and from her place on the floor, he looked impossibly large. He positively loomed over her.

He raised a hand toward her and she waited for the crushing grip of the Force to close off her air supply, or for him to fling her across the room. She was more adept at countering these advances than at their last meeting, but she still feared what damage he could inflict on her.

Instead, he crouched before her, still so large, such a staggering presence. His outstretched hand lifted to her neck, hovering just over the skin. His eyes were stormy in his otherwise meditative face.

“Did I do this to you?”

He was looking so steadily at the dark scattering of bruises that she was sure she could almost feel the insistent nudge of his gaze.

His assault on her neck from her last encounter had indeed marked her with crescent bite marks and odd, stippled bruises. General Organa was wary of these marks, as was Finn, but Rey didn’t know why. Poe had smirked when he saw them, but had ultimately blanched when he found out their origins.

“Yes,” Rey whispered, searching his face for a reaction.

He seemed… pleased.

“You mark so easily.” His voice was low, reverent. He smiled–-a small thing–-before lowering his hand from his almost caress. When he brought his eyes back to hers, the smile was gone.

“Why are you here?” he asked again.

Rey wetted her lips to answer–-an action that Ren watched with furtive attention–-but when she tried to voice the words, they wouldn’t come. She didn’t know why she was here. She only knew that she couldn’t sleep having held the simple gift of touch ransom over this boy. She had fed upon a weakness that he showed her, and she was sick with it. She wanted rest again. She wanted–

“Touch me.”

She was slammed back against the wall so hard that her eyes danced with stars from the impact. He pushed her back, not with his hands, but rather with the full power of the Force he wielded now that he was unchained.

“Are you trying to be funny?” His words hissed from between clenched teeth.

“No!” she managed to squeak out. “I want–”

“To see me beg? To have me on my knees before you with my mouth open?” The pressure on her body increased as he leaned closer. “Want to see me come on the floor like an animal, so starved for the friction of your body?”

She shook her head and it took all her energy to speak, “N-no!”

He released her and she nearly collapsed entirely.

“Tell me what you want, you cruel little scavenger!” he roared. He crouched lower, his face so close to hers that the hot blasts of his breath fanned across her sweat-dampened neck. “Wicked girl, you know I’d let you pick my bones dry.”

“Stop it!” she wheezed.

“Then tell me what you want!”

“I have!”

He turned from her and she nearly reached out for him, her hand mere inches from his sleeve. Willing him to not move away from her.

“I want you to touch me.”

* * *

He whirled on her, saw her outstretched hand. She lowered it, wetting her lips again as she watched him.

Anger still seethed in him as he searched her face, her body. As if he couldn’t make up his mind.

Then he brought his hand to her lips. The gesture squeezed at her heart as she recognized his copying her own initial touch from before–as if he were so unaware of intimacy that he could only act on mimicry. So she did the same as he had, catching his first finger between her teeth, drawing it into her mouth.

Something changed then. He exhaled, relaxing so thoroughly that it was as if invisible tie-lines had been holding his weight and had been suddenly severed. He brought another hand to her face, wondering at the shape of it in the palm of his hand, tracing her jawline. She released his finger and lay a small kiss to the web of skin that connected it to his thumb. He chewed his bottom lip, watching her tentative movements, and his grip on her jaw tightened. She didn’t take her eyes from him.

He moved to her hair, roughly pulling it from the singular bun she had taken to wearing. Ran his hands through the lot of it, roots to ends. When he came to a snarl, he raked his hands roughly through it as Rey winced. Pulled his hands back to find that he’d pulled strands from her head. He did it again–pulled away and out strands of her hair–not to hurt her, but to understand that he could, and how little effort it took to do so. To learn the fragility that is always present even in the face of great power.

She sat still, hands resting on her thighs as his hands drifted to her neck. Probing, nimble fingers tracing over the skin already marked so thoroughly by him. Then he sat forward suddenly, setting her pulse to race as he laid his lips along the line of hurt again. But gentle, soft; retracing bloody footsteps in the snow. Not quite kisses, but rather learning what her skin felt like under his fingers first, then his lips. Discovering the textures of her in as many ways as he could.

His hands drifted to her shoulders, her arms, her impossibly slender wrists, all while measuring the flits of her pulse with his lips. When he squeezed her wrists, the pulse quickened, and she felt his small smile against her skin.

He released her long enough to tug her tunic quickly over her head, gleaning only the barest look at her naked skin before pressing his mouth to her pulse again. Chuckling darkly when he discovered her heart had the capacity to thunder even harder. He drew another bruise there with his lips, marking his place for later.

Ren pulled away then, really looking at the girl for the first time. She looked small. She wasn’t, she was tall enough for a girl, and stronger than many men, but in nothing but her leggings and his large hands hovering over her body, she looked small. He tugged the grey tunic that had been given him over his head and, as an afterthought, pulled off his own trousers so he was left only in tight drawers that reached the bottoms of his thighs.

Hoping, in his own nakedness, to become smaller with her.

He pressed one of her cool hands to his bared chest, and waited.

* * *

It scared Rey how much she wanted him. When she saw his face unmasked for the first time, she had also been frightened. She hadn’t expected a young face, a kind one. She hadn’t expected a wide, generous mouth that looked made for smiling, made for–

Without his clothes, he looked slighter, now. Less impossible. More breakable. She fanned her hand across the warm flesh of his chest, over the smooth expanses of skin. Her fingers brushed over a nipple and he jerked, just so. She tucked that discovery away for later. Rey let her body follow the lead of her hand and slowly, awkwardly, climbed into his lap until they were flush–chest to chest, her face tucked into the crook of his neck. He wrapped those great arms around her and held her tight, drawing fingers down her back; first in painful, discerning strokes, then in gentler, tickling caresses.

He was hard beneath her–though, if she were honest, she didn’t know exactly what to do about it. So she kissed his neck and felt him twitch against her. Hoped they would figure it out together.

They did, eventually. It was a slow process, ridding each other of the rest of their clothes, because neither seemed willing to touch the other any less. But once she was naked, and he was pulled free enough, she settled back into this lap, fingers counting his ribs through his back if, for nothing else, to have something as simple as counting to focus on to calm the shaking of her body.

He shifted, and she thought that he meant to finish things. But he surprised her, and brought his mouth to the shell of her ear. Laid soft kisses down the line of her cheek, across her jaw.

And kissed her gently. She almost laughed at the feeling of it, realizing that they had forgotten, in the need to touch and be touched, to think to bring their mouths together. She felt less scared now, more whole, and he slid easily into her as she moved to deepen their kiss.

They found a hesitant rhythm after a long moment, rocking into each other as they discovered what felt best. And as the urgency grew, Rey found that she wasn’t willing to stop kissing him to attend to it. It felt too right, to be so flush against his body, connected through so many points of contact.

When she eventually tore her mouth away, it was to bite down hard on his shoulder as her whole body shuddered with her climax.

“I need–I’m not–” Ren muttered into her hair as she just held on.

“Keep going–” she urged.

She kissed along his neck to help him along, raked blunt fingertips over one of his nipples in remembrance of his earlier reaction. She cried out when he came, crushing her so hard against his body she couldn’t keep the air in her lungs.

And after, still holding each other so tight, Rey remembered kissing, and how much she liked it. She brought her mouth back to his and urged him to remember, too.

“How do you do it, Rey?” he asked once they parted for breath. The sound of her name fresh from his lips warmed her cooling skin and she snuggled in closer to him.

She trailed her lips along his jaw, finding the faint prickle of hair there a particularly wonderful texture. “Do what?”

He pulled his face from her, seeking her eyes with his.

“How do you find such strength?”

Rey resisted the grin that tugged at her lips. “I thought you said that I was weak.”

His expression hardened. “I lied.”

She shook her head. “I’m no stronger than you are, Ren.”

He shifted from beneath her, disengaging their bodies. She missed him instantly and reached to hold some part of him. He dodged her reaching hand and passed her her tunic instead.

“Ren.”

“You felt it. I know you felt it. You gave into it for a moment, when you threatened to starve me of touch for the rest of my life.”

Rey looked down, ashamed that he had known of the Dark calling her name.

“Don’t look away from me, Rey.” His voice was sharp, but not unkind. When she brought her eyes back to him, he continued. “Put on your clothes. Go back to your bed and sleep.”

“But–” she reached for him again and this time he did not pull away. Her hand wrapped loosely around his forearm and she squeezed with all her strength. Wishing he would stop this.

“Do what must be done on Jakku.” He grabbed the wrist of her grasping hand, shaking it in emphasis. “And don’t you even think about dying.”

“Ren.” She set aside her tunic and moved toward him. She wanted to feel him again, to stop him from sending her away.

“No!” he barked. “Go! Sleep! Rest in preparation for battle.” He reached out and grasped her jaw with one powerful hand. “Live. And come back to me.”

Her heart lifted, daring to hope at his vehemence.

“Come back to me, Rey,” Kylo Ren whispered.

“I need a teacher.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] A Crueler Kindness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8325595) by [erica_schall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/erica_schall/pseuds/erica_schall)




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